SB 192 Quickfacts

SB 192, the Proposed Helmet Mandate, Would Have a Negative Impact on Safety

The California Bicycle Coalition does not believe that mandating helmets for adults is an effective approach to making our streets safer for bicycling or protecting people who bike. We have looked at the evidence, and concluded that a mandate would actually make our streets less safe and lead to an increase in injuries. We are not anti-helmet. Our stance against the mandate has been a difficult one, as the issue ignites passions on both sides. We did not take this stance with the goal of promoting freedom, but rather with the goal of promoting public health and safety.

Helmet mandates discourage bicycling and are not effective at reducing injuries.

While no state in the U.S. has passed a bicycle helmet mandate, several municipalities have, and broader helmet mandates have been enacted in several countries, including New Zealand and Australia. Studies of these laws have found that when a helmet mandate is enforced, bicycling rates drop or stagnate. A meta-study of the available data on helmet mandates found that they provided no net benefit to health. “Before and after data,” the study reads, “show enforced helmet laws discourage cycling but produce no obvious response in percentage of head injuries… no studies have found good evidence of an injury-reducing effect in countries that have introduced bicycle helmet legislation.” A 2013 statistical analysis of large data sets from hospitals across Canada found that mandatory helmet laws in Canada had no clear effect on injury rates. (This excellent editorial on that study — reproduced on our website with permission from BMJ — helps elucidate its findings.)

Promoting bicycling is good for public health when you weigh the benefits against the risks, even when looking at non-helmeted riders.

To Promote Bicycling, and Safer Streets, California Should Invest in Infrastructure.

Senator Liu, who proposed SB 192, has long been an ally of bicycling and walking. We hope that she will turn her attention from a helmet mandate — ineffectual at best, dangerous at worst — to promoting better bicycle infrastructure, which would really make California’s streets safer. For every $1 million invested in bicycle infrastructure, society saves $2.8 million in health care costs. A 2011 analysis of the SF Bay Area Regional Transportation Plan by the California Department of Public Health found that increasing current average daily minutes of walking and bicycling from 4.4 minutes to 22 minutes would result in 2,300 fewer deaths and 23,121 years of life saved, even after accounting for injuries and fatalities from crashes.

A Helmet Mandate Would Unfairly Impact Disadvantaged Communities.

A wide array of peer-reviewed research has documented how low-income neighborhoods and people of color are disproportionately targeted for traffic violations. For low-income people, prohibitively high penalties can become compounded and result in jail time. This punitive policy would compound these problems. And helmets are expensive for many low-income people who rely on a bicycle to get to work or school. To improve the rates of helmet wearing in low-income communities, a helmet subsidy would be a better policy.
Sign our petition against Senate Bill 192 at calbike.org/stopsb192